


brick by brick, heart by heart

by svitzian



Category: Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Blind Kanan Jarrus, Depression, Ezra Bridger Gets a Hug, Ezra Bridger Needs a Hug, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hera Syndulla Needs A Hug, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Parent-Child Relationship, Parental Hera Syndulla, Post-Episode: s02e21-22 Twilight of the Apprentice, References to Depression, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, ezra is a little edgy, partially bc he is a teenager, partially bc he opened a sith holocron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:28:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26787454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/svitzian/pseuds/svitzian
Summary: After Malachor, all Hera wants to do is make things better. That's not so easily done, but she tries her hardest anyways.
Relationships: Ezra Bridger & Hera Syndulla, Ezra Bridger & Kanan Jarrus, Kanan Jarrus/Hera Syndulla
Comments: 14
Kudos: 91





	brick by brick, heart by heart

**Author's Note:**

> first rebels fic go BRRRRRRR  
> this is part of my effort to write a bunch of fics in october. my spinny wheel of character relationships to write about gave me hera & ezra. i've been alternating between 3 prompt lists (choosing my prompt based on my fav one for those characters), and so for this fic, i chose the prompt "tucking the sheets around them" from a list of 50 wordless ways to say i love you, because i just wanted some family goodness. somehow that devolved into a lot of angst and hurt.  
> i hope you enjoy! title is from "beautiful city" from godspell

Nights never used to last this long.

At first, Hera had wondered if it was something to do with Atollon having an irregular rotation on its axis, or if the movements of its star, Ashbo, were somehow making the nights longer, colder—but it wasn’t always like this.

Every twenty-nine and a half standard hours, a new day begins on Atollon. The lack of an axial tilt means that no matter how many days pass, night comes around the same time—and a few hours later, morning follows. There’s no reason for the nights to be longer now than they were before—except, of course, for the one reason Hera won’t admit to, but that she knows all the same, a truth plain and obvious in the knotted mess of her heart.

The nights haven’t gotten longer at all. But she sleeps less, and she sleeps _alone,_ so they feel that way.

Things have been this way since the third night after Malachor. They’re coming on eight years together, but _three nights_ , one sleepless and two riddled with nightmares, are all it takes for Kanan to retreat from her side back to his own bunk, the bunk he hasn’t truly occupied since the first year he joined up on the Ghost.

(There’s been moments in between, of course, nights where they’ve kept their distance, knowing that to come within five feet of each other is to predispose themselves to another fight—but those were only _nights,_ and come the next morning, they were always calm and ready to face the day, to come together again. It had only ever lasted a night.

This has lasted three months.)

Three months without Kanan at her side, without him holding her through the night, keeping her company in the day, without so much as seeing him _smile,_ that goofy grin she loves so much. She tries, _kriff,_ she tries, tries to coax her Kanan back out of himself. She makes the same wry little comments that would’ve gotten a laugh from him, once. She gets her squadron to retrieve some meiloorun on a mission off-world, and when they bring it back to her, she slices it up, goes to sit with him in his bunk between his meditations, offers for them to have it together. Every night, when her body aches from a day’s stresses and she wants nothing more than to collapse into her bed and be dead to the world for a little bit, she stops in and tells him all the news—their victories, their losses, how they’re going to move forward. At best, she gets a few half-hearted comments, the simplest acknowledgements—“ _good, I’m sorry, it’s alright”_ —and at worst, when she comes in to find him not meditating at all, but curled up under the thin blanket of his bunk, mask thrown across the room with his hands over his eyes, butts of his palms digging into his skin as though that will somehow _change_ things—at worst, she gets silence, and that’s when her heart breaks most of all.

Hera tries, but she’s _tired—_ and yet no matter how deep the exhaustion, the despair, seeps into her bones, most nights, she gets no rest. Three months is a long time, but it’s not long enough for her to stop feeling the lack of arms around her, to stop missing the ghost of a man she’s beginning to worry she’ll never see again. So yes, most nights, she gets no rest—and some nights, she doesn’t even try.

It’s easy enough. There’s always work to be done—a not-so-nice consequence of their joining up with the larger Rebellion, but one that Hera is slowly becoming accustomed to. When she feels too alone, when the grief is too much, her datapad is always there with about fifteen new reports from across the galaxy. There are missions to plan, strategies to be designed. It’s taxing work, but most of the time, it commands enough of her focus to keep her mind from drifting—and when her focus isn’t sharp enough for that kind of work, the kind where lives are at stake, she resorts to old methods.

After all, the Ghost is always there. Always has been, and stars, Hera hopes, always will be.

Scraping off carbon-scoring doesn’t take much brains. It’s repetitive and dull, the least favorite chore among the kids. Hera takes it up at night. None of the kids seem to notice that they never get sent to do it anymore—or at least, if they do, they’re too glad to mention it and risk changing that fact. After she’s cleaned up the Ghost’s hull, when she’s feeling a little less frayed, a little more aware, she lets herself work in the cockpit, running diagnostics and reprogramming systems, making sure her ship is in the tip-top shape she prefers.

It’s where she is tonight, bent under the main console to fiddle with some tricky wiring for the second night this week, when she hears it.

It’s not a scream, exactly. It’s a wretched noise, like a sob but _louder_ —and unfortunately, it’s a noise Hera is well-versed in, one she’s heard too many times before, one that usually meant furtive kisses to Kanan’s forehead, quiet whispers shared between them in the darkness of night. It’s a nightmare, and Hera is on her feet before she can think, moving as quickly as she can to the bunk hallway, to his room, wondering, against all odds, if this will be _it,_ if tonight will be the night that she’ll finally get through to him, the night he’ll finally let her share what he’s been carrying for so long—

It’s a tempting thought, a foolish one, and she almost lets herself believe it by the time she’s standing outside Kanan’s door, hand ghosting the control panel, ready to type in the override code, to go in and comfort him like she wants to so badly, like she _hopes_ he’ll finally let her do—

But then the noise comes again, another strangled cry, and it’s not coming from Kanan’s room at all.

Hera follows it down the hall, her heart sinking in a million different ways—and when she sees a lump on the bench out in the lounge, covered in a worn blue blanket with only a hint of cropped black hair peeking out, her heart decides now is the time to plummet entirely.

“Ezra,” she breathes out, a mess of emotion. It takes a moment for her mind to catch up to what she’s seeing, and then, she closes the distance between the two of them in only a few brief steps, heart already going out to this boy, this _trembling_ boy, by the time she’s able to reach for his shoulders. “Ezra, what—”

_What happened,_ she means to ask, but she already knows. Ezra, still far too covered up in that blanket, makes a horrible sniffling sound, and shakes his head.

“ _Ahsoka,_ ” he cries out, raw and hurting, and Hera is too pained to do anything but watch for a moment. “She was—she _—”_

Hera doesn’t hesitate anymore. She moves her hands where they’ve come to rest on Ezra’s shaking shoulders, moves them so that her arms are wrapped around him, so that she’s holding him tight, uncaring for the awkward position it puts her in—all that matters is that she’s here for him, and he knows it.

“Shh.” Hera is experienced in the aftermath of nightmares, and sometimes, she likes to think of herself as an expert, but after Malachor, things have been so _different,_ and she has no idea where _anyone_ stands, and it shows in the slightest tremble to her voice, something that she tries quickly to clamp down on. Ezra doesn’t need that right now. He needs her strong and comforting, and Hera needs to be that for him.

She needs to be that for _someone._

“Shh. Ezra, it’s alright. You’re safe.” That’s not what he’s worried about, Hera knows—she’s comforted him through a few bad dreams, and they’ve never been of himself being hurt. It’s always another—usually one of their crew, one of the other rebels, kriff, a few times even strangers fictional dream people he’s never met and probably never will. Sometimes, for all she likes to be an optimist, Hera worries that his heart is too big for his own good. “It’s over. It’s over now.”

Ezra sobs again, the sound just as awful as before. His face is pressed so tight into Hera’s shoulder that it almost hurts, and she holds him tighter anyways.

“Breathe for me, love.” This is familiar footing, something she knows, something she knows he knows, too—he’s certainly meditated enough with Kanan to have some good breathing tips under his belt, and though she’s no Jedi, Kanan’s taught her, too. _Meditation can help anyone,_ he’d insisted a long time ago, and somehow, that had evolved into the two of them spending the afternoon sitting and simply _breathing_ together.

The strength of that memory—stars, it must be _years_ ago now—hits her squarely in the chest. Rather than let it cause her any more grief, she grips it tight and draws on it, remembers what it had felt like to have Kanan at her side.

“We’ll do it together. In and out, Ezra, you know the drill.” He’s still trembling, but Hera takes the deepest, most exaggerated breath she can, hopes that she’s holding him close enough for him to feel it—and when a moment passes, she exhales, and does it again.

He doesn’t pick up on it right away. He’s still crying so hard, every sob making him shake against her, and more than a few times Hera worries that it isn’t enough, she isn’t doing enough, she has to change course, has to figure out another way—and every time, she remembers what it had felt like to do this with Kanan, and she breathes deeper and steadier than before.

Eventually—Hera isn’t sure how long it takes, though it _feels_ like forever—Ezra’s breathing gradually comes to match hers, far more unsteady but lapsing into the same, slower pattern. The worst of the tightness in Hera’s chest disappears, for now.

“There,” she whispers, holding him no less tight—until Ezra shakes his head, and suddenly she’s left with nothing in her arms at all, because he’s pulled back, shining blue eyes looking up at her.

“What are you doing out here?” There’s something new in his tone—sharp, almost accusatory, like he’s upset with _her_. It catches Hera off guard, and she frowns for a moment, worry returning in full force.

_He’s a teenage boy,_ she reminds herself. _He’s hurting. He’ll lash out._ He seemed to be doing it more and more often these days, but kriff, he’d been through _so much,_ and—

“Running diagnostics,” Hera answers quickly, intentionally leaving no room for questioning, before she narrows her eyes some, a new worry coming to mind. “What are _you_ doing out here?”

There’s a flash of something in Ezra’s eyes that lets her know he wasn’t ready for that question, but he recovers quickly, pressing his lips into a thin line. His voice is quieter than before.

“I didn’t wanna wake Zeb.”

There’s too much to unpack there— _has he woken Zeb before, is it always from the nightmares, how often do they come, why hasn’t he_ told _anyone, how many times has he been out here, has he spent the night out here before, how many times—_ and Hera’s expression softens immediately, as does her heart.

So much for starting to feel like she’d gotten things under control.

“Oh, love,” she says softly, the words exhaled on a breath. She doesn’t pull him back into the same tight hug as before— he’d probably squirm away from it, even feeling as vulnerable as she assumes he feels right now—but she reaches out a hand to rest on his shoulder, worried gaze landing squarely on him.

“Talk to me about it.”

It’s what Kanan would say. It’s what she’s said to Kanan, so many times before. It’s what every member of their crew has come to understand—ignored dreams don’t just go away on their own, and it’s better, _easier,_ to offload some of that burden, to share it with another. There are no secrets in this family, not even the very worst nightmares—they share everything, because kriff, Hera’s half-certain that’s the only way they’re able to function after all they’ve been through.

Ezra flinches away like he’s been stung, his eyes falling from where they’d met Hera’s gaze before to stare instead at the corner of the room, and he shakes his head.

Hera sighs—she wasn’t expecting a warm reception to that offer, of course, but this doesn’t make things any _easier_ —and lowers her hand and her voice.

“Ezra,” she says quietly, half a warning and half a plea. “I know it’s difficult. I know.” She hopes she does, at least, hopes she even has a _modicum_ of understanding for what her boys went through, because otherwise, she doesn’t know how in the galaxy she’s going to ever _help_ them—“But you know what Kanan would say.”

_That_ has Ezra looking back at her, finally—only now, there’s a fire in his eyes, one that’s so _unlike_ him, and if she didn’t know any better, she’d say it was something like anger, but that can’t be right—

“Kanan doesn’t say anything anymore,” Ezra shoots back, a coldness to his voice that makes Hera feel a chill. “ _He_ doesn’t get a say in this.”

It’s Hera’s turn to flinch, now.

Ezra is hurting. Hera _knows_ he’s hurting, and she knows that Kanan’s withdrawal certainly hasn’t made things any better. But he understands—he _has_ to understand, surely—what Kanan’s lost. Hera had assumed he’d understood.

But no matter how mature he is, no matter how many missions he leads or what feats he accomplishes with the Force, Ezra is only a boy, and _kriff,_ how could she have expected so much of him? How could she have so carelessly made an assumption like that, and been so wrong?

Her throat feels tight, but she needs to say something, she _has_ to say something—and in the end, she swallows, and forces the words out, forces her to meet Ezra’s gaze though it breaks her heart all over again. “Ezra…”

No words will be enough, she knows, because no words are going to magically bring Kanan back to them—she’s tried, _Force_ help her, she’s tried. But things can never be that easy.

She still has to say something, and she pauses a moment before she dares to continue. “Kanan isn’t…” _Isn’t well, isn’t coping, isn’t letting_ anyone _in, it’s not only you—_ “Kanan isn’t himself right now.”

Her voice is soft, sympathetic. Ezra winces like he’s been wounded, but he looks apologetic, in the end. Somehow, that breaks her heart even more, and she can’t hold herself back from reaching for his shoulder again.

“But he _cares_ about you, Ezra. Nothing can change that.” For all that she feels she’s lost her Jedi, Hera knows, somehow, that what she says now is true—nothing, no Sith temple, no blinding, no dark side, no Maul, _nothing_ could make Kanan love Ezra any less.

Ezra wilts like Hera’s just said something absolutely crushing, and she frowns, leaning down a bit more so that she can meet his downcast gaze.

“We _all_ care about you, Ezra. So, so much.” Finally, _finally,_ his eyes meet hers, like she’s getting through to him, and Hera dares to try for a small, hopeful smile. “We’re family. You know that.”

Ezra looks a little embarrassed by the open affection— _teenage boy,_ Hera reminds herself, and her smile grows a fraction fonder as he swipes the back of his hand over his eyes, wiping away the last of the tears there as he manages a weary smile and sniffles a little. “I know.”

Hera’s so relieved that she laughs, and a moment later, she gives his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Good,” she says softly, a weight lifted as the tension between them evaporates just as quickly as it had settled down on them. Whatever happened, whatever had made Ezra lash out like that, be so unlike himself—it’s alright now. She’s fixed it, for now.

It feels good to finally be able to _fix_ something.

“Now,” Hera murmurs, and leans back a little, only a flicker of concern lapsing back into her eyes, “are you gonna tell me about this dream of yours?”

Ezra doesn’t deflate like he had before, but his gaze is still decidedly uncertain, and Hera feels the knot in her stomach tighten, even as he gives her another brief, heavy smile.

“I will,” he says, the words spoken like a true promise, before he hesitates. “But—can it wait until the morning?” He rubs at one of his eyes, already reddened from tears, before he looks to her again. “I’m just _really_ tired.”

Something makes Hera hesitate. Something, deep inside, makes her want to insist that whatever it is, he can say it now, they can deal with it now—stars, she’ll even take him off duty in the morning so that he can sleep in, if that will help coax it out of him. _Something_ makes Hera want to insist—

But then she looks into his eyes, hopeful and tired and hurting still, and realizes she doesn’t have the heart to force anything out of him right now.

“Alright,” Hera concedes, her gaze sharpening only a moment later. “But I’m holding you to that. In the morning, Ezra.”

Ezra seems relieved—or at least, his smile gains a bit more strength, which is a welcome sight—and he nods his agreement. “Aye-aye, Captain.”

Hera huffs softly, rolling her eyes at his response, and she shifts to start sliding out of the booth. “C’mon, then. Let’s get you to bed.”

She moves again—and a moment later, realizes that Ezra hasn’t, turning back to him with a question in her eyes. He looks sheepish, and suddenly, Hera knows where this is going even before he speaks.

“Can I stay out here?” His eyes are searching hers, just as pleading as before. “Just for tonight. I’m _really_ tired, and I’m already comfortable out here.”

It’s a lie, plain as day—this booth was outdated and uncomfortable even before she’d gotten her hands on the Ghost, and after additional years of use, it’s only more so. But Ezra looks so _small_ again, and—stars, what will one night hurt?

“Alright,” she concedes, _again—_ really, when had she gotten so soft?—but as with before, her agreement comes with a stern condition. “But I’m staying out here with you.”

Ezra opens his mouth like he’s going to protest, insist that she get some _actual_ sleep in a real bed. Luckily, he’s learned to think ahead during the past couple years, and before he can say something Hera will use against him, he shuts up, nodding instead.

“Okay.” A beat. “If you’re sure.”

Hera smiles again, reaching out in a familiar gesture to ruffle his hair, nevermind that Sabine’s cropped it so short that there’s not much there to ruffle at all. “I’m sure,” she reaffirms, and then, once he’s smiling back at her, she reaches for the pillow left on the booth seat beside him, fluffing it out before scooting herself to sit at the edge and placing it beside her. “Now c’mon, Spectre Six. It is _way_ past your bedtime.”

Ezra chuckles a little, but does as she says, laying his head down on the pillow, his body somehow matching the awkward curve of the booth as he tries to fix his blanket around himself. Hera reaches out to fix it for him a moment later, pulling it up to his shoulders, and from an awkward angle, Ezra looks up to smile at her.

“Thanks, Hera,” he says, almost too quiet to be heard over the thrum of the Ghost’s systems. Hera knows he’s thanking her for far more than the blanket, and she smiles back softly, knowing better, by now, than to try and dismiss his gratitude, instead accepting it as gently as she can.

“Get some rest,” she responds, and Ezra laughs again, soft and tired.

“Okay, okay,” Ezra says, and shifts again, this time onto his side, looking just a bit more comfortable than before, before he pauses again.

“Goodnight,” he says softly, voice quieter than before. Hera feels her heart swell a little bit, watching as he closes his eyes, as his expression gains a bit more peace than before—and when his breathing has grown even more even, when he’s sleeping calmly beside her, when she’s softened by the knowledge that she’s helped at least _one_ of her boys, when she’s certain her voice won’t betray her, Hera allows herself to respond, in little more than a whisper.

“Goodnight, love.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!!!!  
> if you enjoyed, please feel free to leave kudos/comments-- they make me very happy <3  
> if you want to watch me talk about star wars you can find me...:  
> \- on twitter, @G0NKDROID  
> \- or on tumblr, @dotnscal


End file.
